Friday, December 30, 2011

Youth Activisim for a Better Tomorrow

It was a brilliantly sunny, though rather cool, mid-June afternoon in Boston. Banners flying, music blasting, people of all walks of life assembled, reuniting, greeting, embracing, kissing, catching up on lives lived in the space between.

The signal was given with a contagious cheer rising from the crowd, and for the next few hours the streets would be theirs:

Dykes on Bikes revving their engines; shirtless muscled young men dancing to a disco beat atop flatbed floats winding their way down the streets; dazzling drag queens in red and gold and silver; the Freedom Trail Marching Band trumpeting the call;

a black-and-white cocker spaniel wearing a sign announcing "DON'T ASSUME I'M STRAIGHT"; lesbian moms and gay dads pushing strollers or walking beside youth of all ages; Gays for Patsy Klein decked out in their finest country duds, two-stepping down the boulevard;

AIDS activists falling to the pavement of those same boulevards in mock death to expose governmental and societal inaction, which is still killing so many; married same-sex couples walking hand in hand;

Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (P-FLAG) proclaiming "WE ARE PROUD OF OUR LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER SONS AND DAUGHTERS";

alongside political, social, and service organizations, business and religious caucuses of all stripes and denominations, and of course, bystanders watching the procession, holding court from the sidelines.

And in the midst of this merriment and this protest, the humorous posters and angry placards, the enormous rainbow balloon sculptures arching overhead, and the colorful streamers and glistening "fairy dust" wafting down from open windows, amid the shiny black leather and shimmering lamé,

the multicolored T-shirts and the drab business suits, came the youth, their radiant young faces catching the rays of the sun, marching side-by-side, hand-in-hand, their middle school, high school, and college Gay/Straight Alliance banners waving exaltedly in this storm of humanity, announcing their entry, their solidarity, their feisty outrage, and yes, their pride, chanting

And indeed, they will not go back into those dank closets of fear and denial that stifles the spirit and ruins so many lives. Oh, they will physically return to their schools and their homes.

They will continue to study and play sports, to watch movies, listen to their iPods, and write about their days on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Some will most likely continue to serve as community organizers, and some will go on to become parents, educators and political leaders once their school days are behind.

The place they will go to, though, is nowhere that can be seen. It is a place of consciousness that teaches those who have entered that everyone is diminished when any one of us is demeaned; that heterosexism, sexism, and bisexual, intersex, and transgender oppression (as well as all the other forms of oppression) have no place in a just society.

From the sidelines of the parade, beginning as a whisper and gaining to a mighty roar of support: "We are so glad you are here," came voices from the crowd.

"We wish we could have done this when we were in grade school and in college," cried others too numerous to count. "Thank you so much for your courage!"